Word: commonness
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...with guns, balloons, and searchlights. The special province of the British is the multiplication of instructive pamphlets with titles as long as Punch captions ( Your gas mask, how to keep it and how to use it; some things you should know if war should come). They are crammed with common sense and pat slogans like: "Take Care of Your Gas Mask and Your Gas Mask Will Take Care of You." When enemy planes are overhead, "the motto for safety will be Keep it Dark." Britons are warned to memorize the types of raid signals. The man who confuses hand rattles...
Currently exciting comment in London is a provocative, 263-page book that analyzes the tangled family, social, economic and political relationships of Government supporters in the House of Commons. Called Tory M.P., believed the work of several contributors who write under the common pseudonym of "Simon Haxey, " it is an unobtrusive piece of political dynamite, abundantly proves its main point-that people like Lord Balniel are not exceptional among Conservative* members...
...real trip through Spain. Having no truck with the official and political life, Correspondent Longmire wandered through the towns noting the price of eggs, the looks of posters, the crowds at bullfights, jokes, songs and the length of women's bathing suits, came back with a common man's view of a postwar world...
...uniform, in Madrid one man in five; theatres shut down for two minutes at 11 p. m. for an official news broadcast and the national anthem; bullfights are suspended half way through for cheers for Franco, the anthem and the fascist salute-a ceremony that has much in common with humorless Italian and German leader-worship, and more in common with the seventh-inning stretch...
Colgate University's Professor Porter G. Perrin also found a discrepancy between classroom English and the way most people talk, also tried to do something about it last week. His An Index to English* intended "to answer some common questions about English usage and style," makes no bones about being colloquial, passes as good usage in spoken English such a word as enthuse, such an expression as it's me, such pronunciations as ree'-search and ex-qui'-site. Professor Perrin thinks Americans had better stick to American words and not fool around with such tony...